This conference grant application seeks partial support for a symposium entitled, "Mechanisms of Action of Cytotoxic Agents," planned by the Division of Chemical Toxicology of the American Chemical Society. The symposium will be held in San Francisco on March 29. 2000, as part of the 219th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. The goal of this symposium is to bring together academic and industrial scientists from the fields of chemistry, biology, pharmacology and toxicology whose research involves discovering, characterizing and exploiting novel targets of cell-killing chemicals. A group of ten outstanding scientists has accepted our invitation to speak on topics covering drugs and toxins that target the cell cycle, signal transduction pathways, proteosomes, farnesyltransferase, apoptosis, DNA and telomerase, as well as presentations on emerging technologies for identifying new pathways of cytotoxicity and the application of genomics to identifying new targets for antimicrobial agents. The symposium will be of broad relevance to the research interests of the National Institutes of Health in many areas, including cancer and microbial chemotherapy, infectious disease, drug development, and toxicology. The symposium will also foster interactions between academia and industry, as well as provide an opportunity for young scientists to explore the fields of pharmacology and toxicology.